Last weekend, quite unexpectedly, I got a chance to visit Nationalmuseum Design, located on the 4th floor of the Kulturhuset building. The museum currently exhibits ‘Domestic Futures’ collection, which is based on the works of young artists trying to design interiors of the future households. Some of the models involve living outside the Earth, electrical self-sufficiency or utensils and furniture made of recycled materials.

The exhibition is divided into three parts:

Back to the Nature // Åter till Naturen

Bio-tech Living // Det biotekniska Livet

Space Colonization // Bosättning i Rymden.

The first design scenario visualize the life without extensive consumption and emphasize the value of recycled products. In this projection, independence from appalling shops or supermarkets is of the greatest value.

The picture presents two collections: Tribaling Mass Producion by Ma’ayan Pesach and The Alchemist’s Dressing Table by Lauren Davis. The first displays a dinner set made of modern mass-produced materials, waste products coming from the food industry and biological material such as bones, hair and skin. The Tribal tableware questions lost relationship between the consumer and the origins of food, aiming for repurposing the leftovers of the present extensive consumerism. The latter, in turn, gives an insight into transformative powers of alchemy that would enable us to produce natural cosmetics at home. Using elementary materials, such as wood, metal, glass, dried herbs and liquids, the future inhabitants in this scenario will be controlling both the production of the skin care products as well as their impact on the environment.

The bio-tech interior conceptualizes embracing biotechnology in the common household architecture. Dressing the Meat of Tomorrow by James King displays a fiberglass reinforced polyester-made lab-grown steak, based on latest developments in histology and tissue engineering. Growing your own in vitro food spares the humanity from sacrificing thousands of animals. With cattle MRI scans, molds are created to shape your own plate of appetizing meals.

Another concept, Bioplastic Fantastic – Between products and organism utilizing bioresin and silicone is a Johanna Schmeer’s idea on the forthcoming human nutrition. Replacement of the traditional food with synthetic objects that produce essential nutrients in forms of liquids and powders is her vision of alternative food engineering. Food objects are based on bacteria with similar functions in nature, combining functional part of the biological circuit with a non-living matter.

Another group of designers wonders how our life and architecture would look like if we had to leave our planet and start a new episode of humanity on the other one. The main point of these exhibits is an impact of extreme conditions on our basic needs like eating, drinking, wearing clothes and kissing.

Meteorite Cabinet by Studio Swine is a piece of furniture inspired by the exploration of our Universe with a special focus given to the Comet ’67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The material of the cabinet – aluminium foam and titanium-plated steel – is based on the research of astral objects that has recently fallen to Earth.

Exoplanet Travel Posters by NASA/JPL, on the other hand, presents us with the fictional space agency bureau that will be responsible for the interplanetary voyages. Three posters feature recently discovered planets by NASA’s Kepler telescope that proved to have similar conditions to those on Earth making them habitable worlds for the humans from XXIII century.

Extreme Environmental Love Hotel, Carboniferous Room by Ai Hasegawa is a close space able to simulate impossible places to go to, such as Jupiter, Makemake, Cha 110913-773444 or young free-floating planetary-mass object OTS 44. Simple solution based on plastic manipulates invisible atmospheric conditions and predicts how the extreme conditions would influence kissing and sex of the future humans and how our bodies would adapt to those extreme changes.

To see the whole exhibition, go directly to Kulturhuset 4th floor at Sergelstorg. Open until 15th of November.